Technology trade routes

Michael Wood, co-founder of Receipt Bank – Xero UK Add-on Partner of the year in 2012 – stopped by our UK office last week for a conversation (audio here) with me about the fast growing Xero Add-on Partner community.

Of particular interest to me was how Receipt Bank’s partnership with Xero meant that their original UK focussed business plan could quickly broaden to encompass Australia and New Zealand (and soon, the US) and in doing so, earned them the distinction of being possibly the first ever London based technology start-up to open their second office 11,000 miles away from the first one!

And Receipt Bank’s relationship with Xero as the common denominator in three different countries puts them in a privileged and somewhat unique position to sample first hand some of what makes accountants and small businesses different in each region, so Michael shared some personal insights on that subject, too.

I had the foresight to hit the record button to preserve an audio recording of the conversation which you can grab hold of here, it runs to just over half an hour.

Fascinating interview. The discussion on why Australasian uptake of online accounting is higher than the UK was interesting. Seems like you missed the obvious, that NZ followed closely by Australia is leading the world in online accounting uptake not simply because of a cultural attitude to early tech adoption, (new world attitude) but because the worlds largest online pure play cloud listed public company started right here ! The market education was seeded very early on by a company operating at a national / international scale from day one with a much larger accounting channel presence than in the UK…. NZ running at 20% uptake vs UK 2% – there’s only one way this is going and the UK growth must inflect as momentum builds.
Early signs of accountants operating in a globally connected world to trade within a larger global pool of clients and cross collaborating, and add-on partners now operating in multiple markets as they piggy back the ride… it’s such a great time to watch this space. Thanks for sharing Gary.

Hey MW, you rock … Love having our Sophie here full time (of course we put on the best summer in forever for her).
Thanks so much for the support and for helping to open more doors for us bookies, really do appreciate it.